Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade Media
Critic Reviews for Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
An ambitious and promising multiplayer shooter take on 40K that's left Early Access a little prematurely.
Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade's big multiplayer battles create some fun combat that captures the feel of the Warhammer 40K universe enough, but it currently doesn't offer the amount of content I'd expect from a $50 game. Balance and optimization issues also complicate the fun, as do missing elements in the shop and unfinished features that all suggest Eternal Crusade was released a bit too soon.
What's worse is that the problems are also of a technical nature.
You have to wonder what could have been when playing Eternal Crusade as the game has some bright spots but the sum is not nearly what you get when adding up the parts.
Had this game been given more time to germinate it may have bloomed into something nice. Instead it was uprooted and launched before its time and the flaws show. Only the most ardent of Warhammer 40K fans would find something to like here. For all the rest they should wait until this title hits the bargain bin and has a few updates before they dare jump into these waters.
There's potential here, and a lot of the game's promise is steeped in maybes and the possibilities that lay behind future updates; right now, Eternal Crusade is an undercooked, bare-bones affair that can, at times, produce a compelling shootout, but on the whole remains a rote and subpar game. For those outside of the Warhammer faithful, there's no real reason to play Eternal Crusade when there are the likes of Destiny, Battlefront, and Overwatch out there that do far more, far better.
When it was first announced, back in 2013, I hoped Warhammer 40.000: Eternal Crusade would be the natural "massive" evolution for the emergent gameplay found in Relic's Space Marine game, featuring a seamless transition between visceral ranged and brutal melee combat. Sadly this wasn't the case and most of the promised features have been either scrapped or severely reduced in scope, resulting in a published game with such sluggish gameplay and ugly visuals with little to no resemblance to the Relic shooter.We don't understand how it was possible to create a product of inferior quality, compared to a 5 year old game, using a vastly superior graphics engine like UE4, but the Canadian studio actually did it; maybe they tried to bite off more than they could chew.If you can ignore what it should've been and what it is now, you could have a good fun with Eternal Crusade, given you like grinding enough APs and Requisition credits to unlock enough Advancements and Equipment to make your character stand his ground.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Eternal Crusade is trying to do a lot and be a lot of things to Warhammer 40,000 fans. There's an obvious love of the universe and some real thinking behind the more melee-focused combat style of the game but, right now, it isn't really working. The gameplay needs more polish, better balancing and more finesse and the same goes for the presentation. If or when it gets that it could be a contender, particularly if you love the franchise, but until that happens you might want to stick to something else.
